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Ulster is a small European country in the north-eastern corner of the island
of Ireland. It comprises the six counties of Armagh, Antrim, Londonderry,
Tyrone, Fermanagh and Down. Its capital city is Belfast. Ulster has a
total land area of 5456 square miles. In comparison, Luxembourg is 999
square miles and Israel is 7992 square miles in area. Ulster is also
known variously as 'Northern Ireland' (its legally recognised title), the 'Six
Counties', the 'North of Ireland', and 'the Province' according to the political
opinions or prejudices of different sections of the community. The Ulster
state came into existence in 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act.
Ulster remained a part of the United Kingdom with its own devolved parliamentary
system, and retained the right to send 13 MPs to the sovereign Westminster Parliament.
The greater part of the island was granted independent Dominion status as the
Irish Free State under the terms of a controversial Anglo-Irish Treaty. In
1937 that state became Éire. It
declared itself to be a republic in 1949.

Three counties, Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan, lie within the territory of the
Irish Republic. Over the past two thousand years, Ulster's boundaries have
ebbed and flowed like the tide. The Six-County area contains the Ulster
heartland. Under British rule, the fifth ancient province,
Meath, was sliced up between Ulster, Leinster and Connacht. In the reign of
Queen Elizabeth I, Ulster was given Cavan. County Louth, especially the area
around the Cooley peninsula, is an ancient part of Ulster that is now within
Leinster.

Ulster has always been different from the rest of the island.
Ninety years ago, when the first Provisional Government of Ulster was set up in
response to the threat of a Dublin-based parliament, Edward Carson stated that "We
must be prepared... on the morning of Home Rule... to govern those districts of
which we have control." That proved to be the six
counties of the present-day Ulster state. Modern Ulster was reborn on
September 28th 1912 - Ulster Day. We have as much right to call our
homeland 'Ulster' as the USA has to call itself 'America' and the Poles have to
call their homeland 'Poland'. Poland's current boundaries bear little
relationship to its boundaries in 1919. That nation's territory has
shifted sideways to the West. Few people will deny the Polish people the
right to call their state 'Poland' even though it no longer includes 'ancient
Polish' territories that are now part of Lithuania, the Ukraine and
Belarus.

Unionists are those who support the Union - the maintenance of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - which came into being in
1801. There are currently five unionist parties represented in the
Stormont assembly.

The Ulster Unionist Party emerged from a coalition of
Conservative and Liberals in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
This coalition came about to oppose Gladstone's plans to establish a separate
all-island administration in Dublin - 'Irish Home Rule'. The UUP was
always a 'broad church' party united around maintenance of the Union above all
else. Since the UUP lost government power when the old devolved Stormont
parliament was abolished by the British government under Edward Heath in 1972,
unionism has become very fractured. The UUP, led by Reg Empey who
succeeded David Trimble, is no longer the largest unionist party. It is deeply divided over the, 'peace
process,' Good Friday Agreement and the coalition government that has emerged
from the Agreement. Mr Trimble was the First Minister in the first Northern
Ireland Executive.

The Democratic Unionist Party is led by Dr Ian Paisley, a populist
political preacher. He is the Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church
and has been critical of the leadership of the UUP for the past four decades.
The DUP has a large working-class Protestant following, but it is dominated by a
strong conservative evangelical Christian ethos. The DUP is opposed to the
Good Friday Agreement but it took two ministers in the NI Executive who did not
attend its meetings. Dr Paisley is now the First Minister in the new
Northern Ireland Executive, despite some defections from leading members of his
party, notably the party's MEP, Jim Allister.

The Progressive Unionist Party is closely associated with the
paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force. It has one elected representative in
the Assembly. Dawn Purvis. The PUP claims to be the only socialist unionist party and
takes a line on social and economic issues that is very different from any other
unionist group. The party strongly supports the Good Friday Agreement.

Republicans deny the right of Ulsterfolk to self-determination and do not
accept the legitimacy of the Ulster State.Most take the view that there is only room for one political entity on
this island – a unitary state with its capital in Dublin.For almost three decades, a republican group – the Provisional Irish
Republican Army – led an insurrection that sought to overthrow the State and
forcibly incorporate it into an all-island “Thirty-two County Workers’
Republic”.

Two main political parties claim to be republican or Irish
‘nationalist’ – Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party.

Arthur Griffith founded Sinn
Féin in 1906 to advocate a ‘dual monarchy’.This was modelled on the system in Hungary where the Austrian emperor was
also the Hungarian king.Sinn Féin
abandoned this idea under the influence of the secret Irish Republican
Brotherhood and embraced the ideals of republicanism.Sinn Féin has had a close association with the IRA since the Irish war
of independence after the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin.The party has split on the issue of recognition of the Irish State on
several occasions. The mainstream Provisional Sinn Féin came into being in
1970.The most recent substantial split
occurred in 1986 when a new faction emerged calling itself ‘Republican Sinn Féin’.
A new leftwing splinter group emerged in 2006 calling itself éirigi.

Sinn Féin acted as a mouthpiece for the IRA for most of
the recent conflict.At first SF
rejected electoral politics, but this changed after 1981 during the hunger
strikes.SF today has four abstentionist Westminster MPs.Martin McGuinness, once the second in command of the IRA's Derry Brigade
is the Deputy First Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive

The SDLP came
into being in 1970 as a left-leaning ‘constitutional nationalist’ party.Sinn Féin advances mean that the SDLP no longer speaks for most
Ulster Catholics.Under its leader
from 1979 to 2001, John Hume, the party became the most successful political
party in Ulster.Hume had great
influence in Europe, the US and in Dublin.The 1985 Hillsborough Pact was his greatest achievement as it opened the
door to Leinster House involvement ‘as of right’ in Ulster’s internal
affairs.The SDLP has two
ministers in the NI Executive.Mark
Durkan, the SDLP's lacklustre leader has not managed to halt the party's
electoral decline.

As political divisions in Ulster tend to run along sectarian lines, the badge
of ‘perceived religious affiliation’ serves as a convenient indication mark
of identity .In general,
Protestants tend to be unionist and Catholics tend to be Irish nationalist or
republican in outlook.The
divisions tend to be social, cultural and religious as well as political.Most people in Ulster tend to live in areas that are more than 95%
Catholic or Protestant.Much of
this social segregation has intensified over the period of the conflict owing to
intimidation (or fear of intimidation) by ‘the other community’.In Belfast, large walls called ‘peace lines’ separate Catholic and
Protestant districts from one another.However,
the conflict in Ulster is not primarily one of religion but of nationality
although there are some fringe zealots for whom religion is most important.

In short, it was unfinished business.Republicans never accepted the partition settlement and sought to
undermine it.Although the military
threat to Ulster was quickly smashed after the foundation of the State, the IRA
took up arms against it on two further occasions.During the Second World War IRA volunteers shot dead a policeman.One was hanged for this offence.During
the late fifties and the early sixties, a sporadic border campaign ended in
failure when it failed to gain mass support from Ulster Catholics.

However, this
served to maintain a high state of paranoia among elements of the unionist
establishment.For them, the
slightest relaxation would usher in an all-island republic through the back
door.As a consequence, they sought
to marginalise any criticism of the Unionist Party’s government from within
the Protestant community and to repress expressions of Irish nationalist
sentiment from the Catholic community.This
was to be their greatest mistake and contained the seeds of their own undoing.

A campaign
was launched in the 1960s to obtain greater civil rights for Catholics under a
reformist banner of “British Rights for British Citizens” by a body called
the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.Much of the leadership of this group came from Irish republicans and
members of the Communist Party of Ireland.Republicans did not believe in reformism.Instead, they hoped to force a massive repressive State
reaction that would create the conditions necessary for the Republican Movement
to gain mass support and bring about revolutionary change.They did gain that mass support, but not the change that they
thought would come.Instead they
launched what turned out to be a bloody war of attrition that targeted large
sections of the Protestant population under the guise of driving out the
‘British presence in Ireland’.

How about the 'peace process'?

What is the 'Good Friday Agreement'?

What's the alternative if you don't like it?

What is Ulster-nationalism?

Ulster-nationalists love their country and like most nationalists in any part
of the world want to see their countrystand on its own two feetrather
than continue to cling to an outsidepower.Our people have much more in common with each other than with people in
eitherGreat Britain or Éire.
We cannot get by without each other. We ought to unite under an agreed, unifying identity and proceed to face the future as an independent nation with
friendly links with all allies.

Independence would give our people the opportunity to take
control ofdecisions that
affect the lives of our own people. Why be ruled byLondon or Dublin when we can be ruled from Belfast.Independence is forward thinking --- it involves us saying, " The
past is the past. Let us leave all the hurt, wrongs, injustices etc in the past
and build a future free from the division and conflict of the past.We can build a future as a lasting monument and tribute to the 3000+
Ulsterfolk who weren't allowed the opportunity to live to see it. We owe it to
those who lost their lives to build a peaceful Ulster nation.This would in a sense, mean that those people did not die in vain.

Independence can potentially reach out to all our people.
Unionism will never find favour with Irish nationalists. Irish
nationalism/republicanism will never find favour with unionists. Why persevere
with policies that will always be strongly opposed by approximately 50% of our
population? Why not build a vision for the future that potentially all our
people can aspire to, claim allegiance to and indeed be "excited" and
united by?Independence means
saying that we can be one people despite our different faiths, and other such
labels. When we are one people, we can go forward and become One Nation.

As a united people we can take our place confidently and
maturely among the nations on this earth. From Derry to Newry, from Belleek to
Ballycastle and all points in-between, let all our people claim hold of our
common identity and homeland and unite behind the country we all love and share.
Let us emphasise all we have in common and not all the divisive stuff certain
politicians have made a name (and money) from, over these past too many years.

The love of our Ulster homeland is not just a Protestant or
a Catholic privilege or right. Loving our homeland means the love of it all, not
just the Protestant or the Catholic bits. The country belongs to us all. It is
loved and shared by us all. Independence similarly should be for all our people.
It should be about uniting our people so we can embrace the future as a nation
at ease with itself and as a nation that has come to terms with its traumatic
past.To quote John Milton"Awake, Arise or be forever Fallen".

Is there an Ulster National Party?

There is no political party called the 'Ulster National Party' - at least not
yet. The only political party that describes itself as
'Ulster-nationalist' is Ulster Third Way. Ulster Third Way contested the
West Belfast seat in the 2001 Westminster general election on an
Ulster-nationalist platform. .

Where have Ulster-nationalists come from?

Most Ulster-nationalists have come from a former unionist background.
The first overt Ulster-nationalist was William Frederick McCoy, a
Unionist MP for South Tyrone in the old Stormont parliament. He caused a
great stir in the late 1940s when he called for "Dominion Status" for
Ulster. He was eventually silenced by a blinkered, reactionary and
paranoid unionist establishment.

A new wave of Ulster-nationalism emerged after the destruction of Stormont by
a Tory government at Westminster in 1972. Most of this came from the
radical Ulster Vanguard movement. The first major spokesman for
this perspective was Professor Kennedy Lindsay who wrote an influential series
of pamphlets on the matter. In the mid-seventies, it gained a lot of
support in hard-line unionist circles and even across the religious divide among
some members of the SDLP, most notably the veteran trade unionist, Paddy
Devlin. A number of small pro-independence groups emerged at this time,
but only one, Professor Lindsay's Dominion Party, contested elections.

A document advocating independence was issued in 1976 by the paramilitary Ulster
Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee. The most influential
document advocating independence, Beyond the Religious Divide, was
published by the UDA-linked New Ulster Political Research Group in
1979. However, the UDA leadership never made any serious attempt to
educate their volunteers in these radical ideas and this initiative eventually
foundered. The UDA's rank-and-file continued to vote for unionist
candidates.

After the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement gave Dublin a 'right' to a say in the government
of Northern Ireland, a new wave of Ulster-nationalist sentiment emerged.
One political party - the British-based National Front - advocated Ulster
Independence as a response to the Hillsborough Pact. The Ulster National
Front published a booklet, Alternative Ulster, which set out that
party's ideas for an independent 'community benefit' state. At the same
time, two groups emerged from the loyalist Ulster Clubs movement: the
Movement for Self-Determination and the Ulster Independence Committee, (later
the Ulster Independence Movement).

Under the leadership of a Presbyterian minister, Rev Hugh Ross, the UIM
contested elections on a number of occasions. In the 1994 European
election, Mr Ross saved his deposit when he gained 7,858 first preference
votes. The Ulster Independence Movement was badly damaged by scurrilous
allegations on a Channel Four documentary that it was a nothing but a cover for
a secret committee that ordered sectarian killings. Many members were
scared off by the allegations and left the Movement. A hard-core of
activists carried on but it eventually folded at the beginning of 2001. Ulster
Third Way is led by former members of the UIM and the Ulster NF who retain a
vision of an independent Ulster state with freedom and social justice for all of
its citizens - whatever their religion.

How does this differ from unionism and republicanism?

Both unionists and republicans look outside Ulster for support and
sponsorship in turn for their loyalty. Unionist supporters look to
Westminster and to the British Crown and they cherish the memory of the British
Empire. Republican supporters look to Dublin. Ulster-nationalists
believe that we must come together and look to ourselves!